Chris Cornish - Artist

Chris Cornish, photographer and video artist, works with various digital programs that serve to depict the modern architecture of various institutions as potential ruins in an apocalyptic wasteland.
With reference to the work of classical artists such as Giovanni Piranesi, he goes to uncover the contemporary search for a lost greatness. At the moment this is being manifested through reworkings of modern art buildings and works; documentary video footage of a ruined Tate Modern, a graveyard of crumbling Whiteread sculptures etc..

“Repeat v. say or do again; happen again, recur. –n. act or instance of repeating; program broadcast again. –repeatedly adv. –repeater n. firearm that may be discharged many times without reloading.

“In a virtual environment realism becomes a pretext, only the act of game play counts. A mime which can be started over and over again, play evolves, starts to emulate that which has gone before. Emulation is something different from simulation, or imitation. Emulation is the behaviour of code, the system of replay which acts as an intersection of realization.
Digital emulation has recombined a history bred from illusion into a platform equivalent to reality.
What happens when the authenticity of the art institution is challenged by its own emulation? Does art symbol give way to spectacle? Can digital code inherit the sublime?

“Through the manipulation of commercial computer games, it becomes possible to create an environment where concepts of contemporary reality are directly tested. All worldly values are erased through mediation. Even the most perfect emulation of a work of art is lacking in one element; its presence in time and space, its unique experience. Alleviation of the extraordinary strips objects of aura, of a sense of immortality, historic reverence. The art object is just like any other digital fabrication; binary code.

“Art environment turns into a stage setting for hollow warfare, a battle between ghosts. Provoked by the loss of traditional bodily and locational references, the participant must force presence onto their surroundings; the gallery becomes a hall of mirrors. Weapons attempt to reassure; the separation of the self from objects is overcome by the direct and invisible line from weapon mouth to target, freedom obtained through the vector of the projectile. This is the format of the existent future, a game with the vestiges of what has been destroyed.”